Friday, 27 March 2015

The Rhodes to Perdition: Why Rhodes was never ready for the BSM

In the past couple of weeks
university students from Wits, UCT and Rhodes have been making a call for the
transformation of the institutional cultures at the abovementioned
universities. Wits students from the Political Studies Department issued a
demand for the change in the curriculum in order to include African and global
South thinkers from Frantz Fanon, to Lewis Gordon, to Angela Davis. UCT
students are currently engaged in a campaign to have the statue of Cecil John
Rhodes removed and Rhodes University students, in particular those belonging to
the Black Students Movement, have made a call for the change of the
University’s name as part of getting the ball rolling on achieving meaningful
transformation.

BSM member Lihle Ngcobozi addresses Dr Stephen Fourie on behalf of the movement demanding to know why BSM has been prevented from entering the Admin Building. (Kate Janse Van Rensburg)

The Black Students
Movement (BSM) consists of a group of students interested in transformation at
Rhodes University. BSM was born from conversations about personal experiences
of marginalisation and the inability of students to cope in an environment of
structural, class-based and intellectual oppression.

BSM provides an open and
democratic space where all students are leaders and have the right to voice
their views in a safe space. After all, this is the institution where leaders
are supposed to learn.

The issue of the name
change at Rhodes is not new. Since the 1990s and more especially since 1994,
there have been forums and debates around the name change. There have been
conversations regarding the need to address racism that is deeply entrenched in
the institutional culture at Rhodes. However during these moments the
university has managed to avoid real transformation by disguising racism behind
the veil of bureaucratic rhetoric, liberalism and Purple identity.

Through projects like
Purple Thursday and this constant mobilising of students under the banner of
“Purple blood”, Rhodes has managed to avoid questions around race and class
differences. Purple identity creates the illusion that we are one, that there
is no intersectionality and complexity, and that in reality every student
enters the university from varied backgrounds.

Purple identity seeks to
nullify the fact that given South Africa’s Apartheid history many students will
become first generation university graduates at either the undergraduate or
graduate level, or both.

This wave of campaigns
waged by students across the country is also happening at a time in South
Africa’s history where we are dealing with more than just the post-Apartheid
moment. We are in the post-Marikana moment. After 1994, it seemed highly
unlikely (if possible) that a group of human beings would be shot and killed by
state police considering the nation’s history of police brutality under an
unjust Apartheid regime.

However, we are dealing
with the reality that the colonial structure is not dismantled; therefore it
should not come as a surprise that protest would be met with such violence.

At Rhodes, the Black
Students Movement’s peaceful mobilisation has been met with responses that
reflect the tactics of a police state. However, this should not come as a
surprise since the Head of Security is a former member of the South African
Police.

It is ironic that all of
this is happening in the month of the Sharpeville massacre that occurred on 21
March 1960, where 69 people were shot and killed while peacefully protesting
against the unjust pass laws of the Apartheid regime.

The political climate at
the national level is no longer the same. For the past 20 years, the face of
political engagement and thought has been an elder at the average age of over
40 years old. South Africa’s first democratically elected president was in his
70s. The current president is in his 70s. South Africa has a young population
that is facing high unemployment rates and a government that is dragging its
feet regarding this issue. Young people face an uncertain future of employment
and financial security. It therefore it is no surprise that today’s young
person is disillusioned with the so-called post-Apartheid era that is
supposedly “alive with possibility”.

Rhodes University is also
dealing with a different type of student. The demographics are no longer the
same. The majority of the student body is black. However, there is the reality
of black students who are not as affected by inequality as others because of
having attended private or former model C schools. Some of these students do
not have the burden of having to urgently find jobs, once they graduate, in
order to provide for their families as well as pay off student loans. Some of
these students can afford to buy into the illusion of Purple identity.

However, many black
students are not satisfied with the status quo and the existence of the Black
Student Movement is evidence of this.

Rhodes University has not
witnessed anything like this in its history and it continues to underestimate
the Movement by regarding its campaign as “silly” (as the university’s
registrar put it) because Rhodes was never designed to accommodate black
students. The University’s liberal agenda has allowed for its racism to mutate,
thus fitting into this democratic era without truly transforming. However, with
the emergence of a new kind of student in a different political moment
nationwide, where young people are challenging the notion of the rainbow nation
and whether we can truly say we are in a post-Apartheid era, it remains to be
seen whether or not Cecil’s final fortress will stand.

Frantz Fanon

1925 - 1961

This Blog

This blog contains resources directly related to Frantz Fanon's life and work, the secondary literature on Fanon and other resources useful for engaging Fanon's ideas here and now. Some of what is here comes from, or relates to, a particular set of ongoing discussions around Fanon's work in Grahamstown.